Building Collaboration into Workspace Design

Building Collaboration into
Workspace Design
By Jeff Avallon & Amanda Schneider
A
n office is an external expression of
a company’s ethos and personality.
Employees, customers and prospects
draw significant — even subliminal —
associations with organizations based on
the place they call home. Collaboration,
creativity and innovation are key components
of the modern workplace and an increasingly
important recruitment tool for successful
companies to attract top-tier talent.
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September/October 2013
Given the nature and speed of business
today, how can the workplace contribute
positively to employee performance and
retention? There is no blueprint for creating
innovative work environments, but there are
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physical and environmental characteristics
that can be emulated and adapted by every
creative business.
What is important to note is a subtle but
significant shift away from personal space
to community and shared areas. This ratio
used to be 80:20, but an added focus on
collaborative spaces has moved that ratio
closer, anecdotally, to 60:40. Community
and shared spaces are viewed as the work
horses of innovation — and are thus
competitive differentiators — so creating
a highly collaborative work environment
should be at the forefront of most
companies’ minds.
The pervasiveness of mobile communications
devices allows employees to work from
anywhere in the world at any time. Businesses
now view the workplace not just as a place for
work, but as a place where their top talent go
to work together. Many associate the term
“modern workplace” with grand visions of
an organization’s entire workforce leveraging
video conferencing, mobile tools and high-tech
gadgetry to get the job done. This Jetsons-like
dream will never be fully realized because
it lacks a vital element of successful creative
companies: in-person communication.
Despite advancements in technology that
empower employees to conduct work
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from anywhere at any time, person-to-person
interactions have proven to be the best way to
continually drive innovation within a company.
Businesses think of their offices as mother
ships where employees go to recharge and gain
inspiration from colleagues. While certain
employees can be more productive at home,
long-term telecommuting can negatively impact
overall employee creativity.
Understand the collaborative
needs of the business
The first step in planning office layouts
that better enable collaboration is to fully
understand the type of collaborative work
that is undertaken within the company
in question. For instance, advertising and
technology companies need to be able to
swarm together and ideate quickly, so they may
place emphasis on mobile furniture, while law
offices or insurance companies require more
solitary spaces for focus work and formal,
traditional conference rooms for meetings.
“Heads-down” spaces and conference/meeting
rooms were once the focal points for facility
managers; however modern offices now have
an entire toolbox of options for types of group
spaces. Meetings can now take place in cafés,
brainstorm areas or even open reception areas.
Variety is the spice of innovation life
Would you consider ordering the same meal
from the same restaurant every time you went
out for dinner? Many organizations essentially
ask their employees to do this by only offering
meeting areas in the form of standard, static
conference rooms. Close your eyes and
picture a conference room that regularly hosts
brainstorming sessions. What does it look like?
Most people likely imagine a room containing
a long table that seats six to 10 people with a
phone in the middle, somewhat uncomfortable
wheeled chairs, a TV screen, a writable surface
at the head of the room and a few potted plants.
It’s a fairly banal environment that has a formal,
heavy feel and can dampen creative thinking.
Executives who are looking to break
through talent silos should take
measures to ensure employees
mingle and collaborate frequently.
Rather than having a single ideation space,
companies need to create many more dynamic
collaboration areas throughout the entire office.
These do necessarily need to be expansive;
rather, they simply need to be locations where
people feel comfortable getting together
and working, like cafés, lounges or even roof
decks. Create disparate environments so
employees can match each location’s function
to the process on which they are currently
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September/October 2013
Design areas around people’s movement to create natural
communication lines and “go-to” ideation hideaways.
working. Leave room and create spaces for
impromptu collaborations as well. Creative
organizations find that great ideas flow more
easily over a cup of coffee than in a traditional,
structured environment. Graphic facilitation
is a key factor in these collaboration spaces,
as ‘Eureka!’ moments can strike at any time.
Leave dry-erase surfaces and markers in
the kitchen, TVs in communal spaces and
warm, natural light and boldly colored walls
in windowless rooms. All of these elements
appeal to different personality types and can
serve as catalysts to productive collaboration.
Make personal interactions as
frictionless as possible
Instantaneous collaboration is a critical
component of any innovative office design.
Big ideas flit into people’s brains quickly
and must be acted upon immediately, so
it is important to enable collaboration on
short notice. An overreliance on conference
room booking systems or other cumbersome
processes can cut brilliance off at the
knees, so it is important to make it simple
for people to interact with each other by
removing barriers to teamwork.
Another key trend that innovative
companies are embracing is the notion
of making the workspace multi-task. File
cabinets with erasable surfaces and movable
walls that allow employees to change
the dimensions of an idea room allow
businesses to extend the usefulness of their
current assets and do more with less space.
The creation of unexpected spaces can spur
spontaneous innovation.
Proximity and mobility are key to enabling
instantaneous collaboration. Collaboration
areas need to be pervasive throughout the
entire workplace and adjacent to personal
workspaces. Movable furniture is helpful
for planning this type of group work as it
helps employees align each room or space
for their exact specifications quickly. Static,
immovable objects like whiteboards are
counterintuitive to borderless collaboration.
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Items like mobile dry erase surfaces and high
tables, however, create inviting collaborative
spaces ideal for reviewing drawings or text.
Experiment with different types of furniture
and collaboration tools to find out what
works best for employees.
Multi-functional spaces suited to various types
of meetings create value for the workplace
by making it enticing for workers to use.
It’s always depressing to see an aesthetically
gorgeous room go unused because it simply
does not fit into people’s normal workflows.
Avoid these beautiful, deserted spaces by
designing areas around people’s movement to
create natural communication lines and “go-to”
ideation hideaways.
Town square concept
Many noteworthy workplace designs have
a central area where employees gather for
meals, major announcements from executives
or just to hang out. Community spaces are
critical for establishing a positive, creative
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board games can give employees a chance to
blow off steam and create lasting, productive
relationships with their colleagues.
Avoiding the “How do I use
this?” conversation
After imbuing a workplace with innovative
traits, the worst thing a facility manager
can do is allow the spaces to go unused.
Giving employees a quick facility tour can
help by identifying and demonstrating all of
the co-working spaces and tools that are at
employees’ disposal, especially in a new office
space or layout. Workers who are not used
to collaborative tools may be intimidated, so
it is important that companies remove those
doubts to make the best use of corporate
funds. HR must also be incorporated into
this demonstration because it is important
to set rules and boundaries for the workplace
to ensure everyone has equal opportunity to
leverage the collaboration spaces.
environment for the entire company. They
set the tone for the rest of the office and the
heart of the company and can also serve
as the epicenter of innovation. Communal
refreshments, snacks and great views can
serve as natural enticements for employees to
conduct ideation sessions within these spaces.
Serendipitous collaboration seems
oxymoronic because it violates the very
definition of the word ‘serendipity;’ however,
many smart organizations are weighing the
value of this trait when their offices are in the
blueprint stage. Smart, talented people come
to the office each day, but companies often
only tap into the minds of a small fraction of
the larger group. Executives who are looking
to break through talent silos should take
measures to ensure employees mingle and
collaborate frequently, even unintentionally.
Community crowdsourcing runs under the
same serendipitous collaboration umbrella
but requires different facility management
tactics. The idea is to offer the option for
departments or even individuals to pose
challenges or questions within a communal
area. Like the Steve Jobs model, this strategy
provides access to a wide range of skills and
perspectives that could potentially be used
to solve an issue that has plagued a project
team. For instance, Reebok designers put
their drawings on a common area wall
for others to critique and troubleshoot
problems anonymously. Sales teams could
highlight “big fish” in the hopes that one of
their colleagues had contacts within that
organization. Tapping into the collective
wisdom of a company is no longer a daunting
task and is instead a chance for workers to
help colleagues in need.
Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs designed
his company’s Cupertino, Calif., USA
headquarters to have one staircase within the
entire building to necessitate that co-workers
from every department rub shoulders with
and engage one another. This encouraged
interdepartmental discussion, sharing of
perspectives and the gain of insights, all
between a few flights of stairs. Personal
interactions drive innovation, so consider
All work and no play makes
companies dull
Play is an important part of everyday work
life in a corporate office. No one wants
to walk into Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick
in the Wall” video where people walk in,
sit down, remain quiet and then leave.
Workplaces need to be vibrant places that
welcome energy and personal interactions.
Foosball tables, Xbox consoles and even
September/October 2013
There are two unconventional methods that
can enhance a company’s central communal
space: serendipitous collaboration and
community crowdsourcing.
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enhancing unconventional collaboration
areas — i.e. printer stations or stairways —
with dry erase surfaces or other idea capture
tools to enable this type of co-working.
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Despite numerous advances in technology,
personal collaboration is — and always will
be — the one true source of competitive
differentiation. Highly collaborative work
environments are inviting to new talent
and help retain established business
leaders. Empowering the workforce with
collaboration solutions that suit their
workflow is a challenging endeavor but
one that pays for itself tenfold if executed
correctly. FMJ
Jeff Avallon is currently
vice president of business
development at IdeaPaint
and is a venture partner
at Gen-Y Capital. Avallon
joined IdeaPaint shortly after
graduation from Babson
College while the company
was in product development.
He was directly involved in commercializing
IdeaPaint’s first-generation commercial product,
determining the company’s channel strategy,
acquiring its first customers and driving scale.
Amanda Schneider,
LEED AP Interior Design
+ Construction, is a
workplace design expert for
IdeaPaint. Schneider has
a diverse background in
industrial design, product
management, marketing and
sales through her work for a
breadth of companies within the interiors industry.
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